A Thousand Farewells

Hi all! 

I hope everyone enjoyed their reading week! I sure did. Coming home was so hard, but putting my winter boots on was even harder.

Anyway this week I have to write a blog for my J class about A Thousand Farewells - by Nahlah Ayed. So here I go... 

Overall I thought her book was good. Ayed has a nice style of writing though sometimes it was a little hard to follow. I liked how she could tie everything together by the end of a chapter, but throughout certain chapters I was confused about who people were and where they came into the memory and so on. I also found it really hard to keep up with all her friends and acquaintances. Of course, that's my issue because I'm more accustomed to Canadian-English names, but it still made a difference to the way I read her story. 

For me her writing on a whole 'worked.' There wasn't much throughout the piece that I found to be bad in anyway (writing, story-telling, etc.). As I mentioned before the only thing that threw me off was the use of all the different names.

I found myself wondering about her personal life all through the book. Does she have a husband? A boyfriend? A girlfriend? A family of her own? Where did she draw the line between work and life? Is her work her life? To the latter I decided for my own reading pleasure that it was. How could anyone be away that long and see all that she saw without having those experiences fully consume her? It would have been nice for her to include more personal details about her life just so that I, the reader, could get a sense of why she went back for so long and so many times and where she was mentally and emotionally when she decided to return to Jordan.

It would also have been nice to know what her family was feeling about her return to Jordan. She mentioned in one of her chapters that had she died in the explosion in Beirut her father would have been beside himself, but what about everyone else? What was their reaction when she told them she was going back to a war-torn country? It would have been nice to have details like that in her piece.

I think journalists can learn a lot from this book. Ayed touched on some very difficult topics and I can only imagine how hard it was for her to write everything she did to get the story out. I've found it hard to write stories that are important to me while keeping an unbiased and fair perspective, and I think Ayed accomplished this. She spoke about how after 9/11 her family and race were being scrutinized, but she never made it sound as though this was a problem for her. She continued on with her life – as she should.

I also think journalists could learn from her perseverance. There’s nothing better than hearing someone’s story told with passion. Whenever I hear a story I can always tell when the writer was affected by a situation personally. This makes stories more interesting. Of course not everything has an affect on everyone, but I think journalists should look at Ayed’s writing and learn from her techniques.

This story doesn’t really compare to any of the non-fiction books and stories I’ve read. I love autobiographies – I find other people’s lives so interesting and love to know where they come from, what they’ve done, who they’ve met – but this was different. This, I felt, was a story about a girl who came to terms with thousands of years of repression and injustice and still managed to come out with a positive outlook on life. Honestly, I felt relieved after reading her story because it’s not often that you hear about stories like hers with a happy ending.

This book gave me a larger sense of appreciation for my life. I’ve always been grateful for everything that I have – my family, my health, my family’s health, friends, education, good times, bad times, an overall fantastic life – but it really opened my eyes to just how differently some people live. It’s easy to forget that your life and living situations are fragile; I won’t be forgetting that anytime soon. 

Well back to school tomorrow, so I'll get on my laundry and putting the finishing touches on some other homework. 

Happy reading! 

  M